Dechen Tshomo  

A team of experts from India will soon visit Bhutan to carry out a detailed project report on the county’s multi-disciplinary super-specialty hospital, which is one of the major flagship pledges of the government.

Health Minister Dechen Wangmo said that a team comprising of planners, architects, engineers and doctors will come within a month to do a detailed project report. It will include costing, equipment the hospital will have, and designs among others.

Government of India will support in establishing the super-specialty hospital in the country.

“We had a team from India earlier who sat with our team and looked at a couple of sites that we proposed,” Lyonpo said. “We have consensus on the services that we want to have, and the design because we are emphasising on green and sustainable design concept.”

The ministry has proposed couple of sites for the establishment of the hospital to the team.

While the education city project site at Wang Sisina, in Thimphu, is one of the options, Lyonpo said they are looking at feasibility including having adequate water at the site. “We are trying to build into our calculation as we don’t want to put a site without having done all these pre-assessments.”

The other option is at Serbithang. “One possibility is within the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital campus. We are trying to map that out also,” Lyonpo said.

Construction of the 500-bed multi-disciplinary super-specialty hospital is one of the major projects in the pipeline in the 12th plan.

The hospital would have facilities for kidney transplant, cardiac surgery, comprehensive cancer treatment, nuclear medicine and fertility centre, among others.

At the tertiary level, the government is hoping to achieve progress in multi-disciplinary hospital in close consultation with counterparts in India.

With the multi-disciplinary hospital in the country, referrals cases are expected to be reduced by 80 to 90 percent.

According to the recent state of the nation report, the multidisciplinary super-speciality hospital is expected to generate cost savings of more than Nu 222 million annually by reducing third country referrals for cancers, cardiovascular diseases, organ transplants and neurosurgical cases.